Today, my garden has all the early appearance of a spring garden. Some blooms are already disappearing, like Scilla, but they are being replaced by an abundance of new blooms. I love the excitement of my spring garden, the sudden flash of color, the awakening of a new growing season.
I am reminded that it is one thing to bloom and be beautiful. It is quite another to ripen. I often think of new aspects of myself now beginning to bloom, after all these years. Actually, I think that for me it is also a time of ripening, and that may be more significant.
Ripening comes to me only after facing and accepting the pain, the darkness, the uncertainty. To ripen, I have had to face the possibility of pain, the uncertainty of a future. I have needed to become a friend of the night.
Ripening may be revealed in the bright light of day, but it occurs only through the acceptance of the dark time.